Captain Hornblower R. N.

by C. S. Forester

  ‘I know that,’ said Hernandez, his interlocked fingers working galvanically. ‘But I assure your excellency that I can only obtain wheat flour for them by fighting for it, and I know that el Supremo would not like me to fight at present. El Supremo will be angry.’

  Hornblower remembered the abject fright with which Hernandez had regarded el Supremo the night before. The man was in terror lest he should be denounced as having failed to execute his orders. And then, suddenly, Hornblower remembered something he had unaccountably forgotten to ask for – something more important, if possible, than tobacco or fruit, and certainly far more important than the difference between maize flour and wheat.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will agree to use maize flour. But in consequence of this deficiency there is something else I must ask for.’

  ‘Certainly, Captain. I will supply whatever you ask. You have only to name it.’

  ‘I want drink for my men,’ said Hornblower. ‘Is there wine to be had here? Ardent spirits?’

  ‘There is a little wine, your excellency. Only a little. The people on this coast drink an ardent spirit with which you are perhaps not acquainted. It is good when of good quality. It is distilled from the waste of the sugar mills, from the treacle, your excellency.’

  ‘Rum, by God!’ exclaimed Hornblower.

  ‘Yes, señor, rum. Would that be of any use to your excellency?’

  ‘I shall accept it in lieu of anything better,’ said Hornblower sternly.

  His heart was leaping with joy. It would appear like a miracle to his officers that he should conjure rum and tobacco from this volcano-riddled coast.

  ‘Thank you, Captain. And shall we begin to slaughter the cattle now?’

  That was the question on which Hornblower had been postponing a decision ever since he had heard about the arrival of the cattle on the beach. Hornblower looked up at the lookout at the masthead. He tested the strength of the wind. He gazed out to sea before he took the plunge.

  ‘Very well,’ he said at length. ‘We will start now.’

  The sea breeze was not nearly as strong as yesterday, and the weaker the breeze the less chance there was of the Natividad coming in to interrupt the Lydia’s revictualling. And as events turned out the Lydia completed the work undisturbed. For two days the boats plied back and forth between the beach and the ship. They came back piled high with bloody joints of meat; the sand of the shore ran red with the blood of the slaughtered animals, while the half-tame vultures gorged themselves into a coma in the piled offal. On board the ship the purser and his crew toiled like slaves in the roasting heat, cramming the brine barrels with the meat and tugging them into position in the storerooms. The cooper and his mates worked for two days with hardly a break, making and repairing casks. Sacks of flour, ankers of rum, bales of tobacco – the hands at the tackles sweated as they swayed these up from the boats. The Lydia was gorging herself full.

  So obvious were the good intentions of those on shore that Hornblower was able to give orders that the cargo consigned to this coast should be released, and so the boats which bore the meat and flour to the ship returned laden with cases of muskets and kegs of powder and shot. Hornblower had his gig hoisted out, and was rowed periodically round his ship inspecting her trim, in the anticipation lest at any moment he would have to hoist up his anchor and beat out to sea to fight the Natividad.

  The work proceeded by night as well as by day; in fifteen years at sea – every one a year of warfare – Hornblower had seen many opportunities lost as a result of some trivial lack of energy, some omission to drive a crew into exerting the last ounce of its strength. He had lost opportunities himself like that, for that matter. He still felt a revulsion of shame at the recollection of how he had missed that privateer off the Azores, for example. For fear of standing condemned again in his own eyes he drove his men until they dropped.

  There was no time for enjoyment of the pleasures of land at the moment. The shore party did indeed cook their rations before a huge bonfire, and revel in roast fresh meat after seven months of boiled salt meat, but with the characteristic contrariness of British sailors they turned with revulsion from the delicious fruit which was offered them – bananas and pawpaws, pineapples and guavas, and considered themselves the victims of sharp practice because these were substituted for their regulation ration of boiled dried peas.

  And then, on the second evening, as Hornblower walked the quarterdeck enjoying the sea breeze at its freshest, and revelling in the thought that he was free of the land if necessary for another six months, and looking forward with the sheerest joy to his imminent dinner of roast fowl, there came the sound of firing from the beach. A scattering volley at first; a few dropping shots, and then another ragged volley. Hornblower forgot his dinner, his feeling of wellbeing, everything. Trouble on the mainland, of whatever sort, meant that the success of his mission was being imperilled. In hot haste he called for his gig, and he was pulled to the shore by a crew who made the stout oars bend as they flung their weight on the handles in response to the profane urgings of Coxswain Brown.

  The scene that greeted his eyes as he rounded the point excited his worst apprehensions. The whole landing party was clubbed together on the beach; the dozen marines were in line on one flank, reloading their muskets; the sailors were bunched beside them armed with whatever weapons had come to their hands. In a wide semicircle round them were the inhabitants, brandishing swords and muskets, and in the no man’s land between the two parties lay one or two corpses. At the water’s edge, behind the sailors, lay one of the hands with two of his mates bending over him. He was propped up on his elbow and he was vomiting floods of blood.

  Hornblower sprang into the shallows; he paid no attention to the wounded sailor, but pushed his way through the mob before him. As he emerged into the open there came a puff of smoke from the half circle up the beach and a bullet sang over his head. He paid no attention to that either.

  ‘Put those muskets down!’ he roared at the marines, and he turned towards the gesticulating inhabitants and held up his hand palm forward, in the universal and instinctive gesture of peace. There was no room in his mind for thought of personal danger, so hot was he with anger at the thought that someone was botching his chance of success.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ he demanded.

  Galbraith was in command. He was about to speak, but he was given no opportunity. One of the sailors who had been attending to the dying man came pushing forward, discipline forgotten in the blind whirl of sentimental indignation which Hornblower instantly recognised as characteristic of the lower deck – and which he despised and distrusted.

  ‘They been torturing a pore devil up there, sir,’ he said. ‘Lashed him to a spar and left him to die of thirst.’

  ‘Silence!’ bellowed Hornblower, beside himself with rage not merely at this breach of discipline but at realising the difficulties ahead of him. ‘Mr Galbraith!’

  Galbraith was slow of speech and of mind.

  ‘I don’t know how it started, sir,’ he began; although he had been at sea since childhood there was still a trace of Scotch in his accent. ‘A party came running back from up there. They had Smith with them, wounded.’

  ‘He’s dead now,’ put in a voice.

  ‘Silence!’ roared Hornblower again.

  ‘I saw they were going to attack us, and so I had the marines fire, sir,’ went on Galbraith.

  ‘I’ll speak to you later, Mr Galbraith,’ snapped Hornblower. ‘You, Jenkins. And you, Poole. What were you doing up there?’

  ‘Well, sir, it was like this, sir—,’ began Jenkins. He was sheepish and crestfallen now. Hornblower had pricked the bubble of his indignation and he was being publicly convicted of a breach of orders.

  ‘You knew the order that no one was to go beyond the creek?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  Tomorrow morning I’ll show you what orders mean, and you, too, Poole. Where’s the sergeant of marines?’

  ‘Here,
sir.’

  ‘A fine guard you keep, sergeant, to let these men get by. What were your pickets about?’

  The sergeant could say nothing; he could only stand rigidly at attention in face of this incontrovertible proof of his being found wanting.

  ‘Mr Simmonds will speak to you in the morning,’ went on Hornblower. ‘I don’t expect you’ll keep those stripes on your arm much longer.’

  Hornblower glowered round at the landing party. His fierce rebukes had them all cowed and subservient now, and he felt his anger ebbing away as he realised that he had managed this without having to say a word in extenuation of Spanish-American justice. He turned to greet Hernandez, who had come riding up as fast as his little horse would gallop, reining up on his haunches in a shower of sand.

  ‘Did el Supremo give orders for this attack on my men?’ asked Hornblower, getting in the first broadside.

  ‘No, Captain,’ said Hernandez, and Hornblower rejoiced to see how he winced at the mention of el Supremo’s name.

  ‘I think he will not be too pleased with you when I tell him about this,’ went on Hornblower.

  ‘Your men tried to release a man condemned to death,’ said Hernandez, half sullenly, half apologetically. He was clearly not too sure of his ground, and was nervous about what would be Alvarado’s attitude towards this incident. Hornblower kept a rasp in his voice as he went on speaking. None of the Englishmen round him, as far as he knew, could speak Spanish, but he was anxious for his crew to believe (now that discipline was restored) that he was wholeheartedly on their side.

  ‘That does not permit your men to kill mine,’ he said.

  ‘They are angry and discontented,’ said Hernandez. ‘The whole country has been swept to find food for you. The man your men tried to save was condemned for driving his pigs into the bush to keep them from being taken and given to you.’

  Hernandez made this last speech reproachfully and with a hint of anger; Hornblower was anxious to be conciliatory if that were possible without exasperating his own men. Hornblower had in mind the plan of leading Hernandez out of earshot of the Englishmen, and then softening his tone, but before he could act upon it his attention was caught by the sight of a horseman galloping down the beach at full speed, waving his wide straw hat. Every eye turned towards this new arrival – a peon of the ordinary Indian type. Breathlessly he announced his news.

  ‘A ship – a ship coming!’

  He was so excited that he lapsed into the Indian speech, and Hornblower could not understand his further explanations. Hernandez had to interpret for him.

  ‘This man has been keeping watch on the top of the mountain up there,’ he said. ‘He says that from there he could see the sails of a ship coming towards the bay.’

  He addressed several more questions rapidly, one after the other, to the lookout, and was answered with nods and gesticulations and a torrent of Indian speech.

  ‘He says,’ went on Hernandez, ‘that he has often seen the Natividad before, and he is sure this is the same ship, and she is undoubtedly coming in here.’

  ‘How far off is she?’ asked Hornblower and Hernandez translated the answer.

  ‘A long way, seven leagues or more,’ he said. ‘She is coming from the south eastward – from Panama.’

  Hornblower pulled at his chin, deep in thought.

  ‘She’ll carry the sea breeze down with her until sunset,’ he muttered to himself, and glanced up at the sun. ‘That will be another hour. An hour after that she’ll get the land breeze. She’ll be able to hold her course, close hauled. She could be here in the bay by midnight.’

  A stream of plans and ideas was flooding into his mind. Against the possibility of the ship’s arrival in the dark must be balanced what he knew of the Spanish habit at sea of snugging down for the night, and of attempting no piece of seamanship at all complicated save under the best possible conditions. He wished he knew more about the Spanish captain.

  ‘Has this ship, the Natividad, often come into this bay?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Captain, often.’

  ‘Is her captain a good seaman?’

  ‘Oh yes, Captain, very good.’

  ‘Ha – h’m,’ said Hornblower. A landsman’s opinion of the seamanship of a frigate captain might not be worth much, but still it was an indication.

  Hornblower tugged at his chin again. He had fought in ten single ship actions. If he took the Lydia to sea and engaged the Natividad on open water the two ships might well batter each other into wrecks. Rigging and spars and hulls and sails would be shot to pieces. The Lydia would have a good many casualties which would be quite irreplaceable here in the Pacific. She would expend her priceless ammunition. On the other hand, if he stayed in the bay and yet the plan he had in mind did not succeed – if the Natividad waited off shore until the morning – he would have to beat his way out of the bay against the sea breeze, presenting the Spaniards with every possible advantage as he came out to fight them. The Natividad’s superiority of force was already such that it was rash to oppose the Lydia to her. Could he dare to risk increasing the odds? But the possible gains were so enormous that he made up his mind to run the risk.

  VI

  Ghostlike in the moonlight, with the first puffs of the land breeze, the Lydia glided across the bay. Hornblower had not ventured to hoist sail, lest a gleam of canvas might be visible to the distant ship at sea. The launch and the cutter towed the ship, sounding as they went, into the deep water at the foot of the island at the entrance of the bay – Manguera Island, Hernandez called it when Hornblower had cautiously sketched out his plan to him. For an hour the men laboured at the oars, although Hornblower did his best to aid them, standing by the wheel and making as much use as possible of the leeway acquired by the ship through the force of the puffs of wind on the Lydia’s rigging. They reached the new anchorage at last, and the anchor splashed into the water.

  ‘Have that cable buoyed and ready to slip, Mr Bush,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Call the boats alongside. I want the men to rest.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Mr Gerard, you have charge of the deck. See that the lookouts keep awake. I want Mr Bush and Mr Galbraith to come below with me.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  The ship was seething quietly with excitement. Everyone on board had guessed the captain’s plan, even though the details of its execution, which he was now explaining to his lieutenants, were still unknown. In the two hours which had elapsed since the arrival of the news of the Natividad’s approach Hornblower’s mind had worked busily at the perfection of his plan. Nothing must go wrong. Everything that could possibly contribute to success must be done.

  ‘That is all understood?’ he asked finally; he stood stooping under the deck beams in his screened off cabin while his lieutenants fiddled awkwardly with their hats.

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Hornblower, dismissing them.

  But within five minutes impatience and anxiety drove him up on deck again.

  ‘Masthead, there? What can you see of the enemy?’

  ‘She’s just come up over the island, sir. She’s more than hull down. I can only see her torps’ls, sir, below her t’garns.’

  ‘What’s her course?’

  ‘She’s holding her wind, sir. She ought to make the bay on this tack.

  ‘Ha – h’m,’ said Hornblower, and went below again.

  It would be four hours at least before the Natividad reached the entrance, and before he could take any further action. He found himself pacing, stoopshouldered, up and down the tiny limits of his cabin, and checked himself furiously. The iron-nerved captain of his dreams would not allow himself to work himself into this sort of fever, even though his professional reputation was to be at stake in four hours’ time. He must show the ship that he, too, could face uncertainty with indifference.

  ‘Pass the word for Polwheal!’ he snapped, coming out through the screen and addr
essing a group by a maindeck gun; and when Polwheal appeared he went on ‘My compliments to Mr Bush, and tell him that if he can spare Mr Galbraith and Mr Clay and Mr Savage from their duties I would be glad if they would sup with me and have a hand of a whist.’

  Galbraith was nervous, too. Not merely was he anticipating a battle, but hanging over his head there was still the promised reprimand for his part in the skirmish of the afternoon. His rawboned Scotch figure moved restlessly, and his face was flushed over his high cheek bones. Even the two midshipmen were subdued as well as fidgety.

  Hornblower compelled himself to play the part of the courtly host, while every word he uttered was designed to increase his reputation for imperturbability. He apologised for his shortcomings of the supper – the ship being cleared for action involved the extinction of all fires and the consequent necessity for serving cold food. But the sight of the cold roast chickens, the cold roast pork, the golden cakes of maize, the dishes of fruit, roused Mr Midshipman Savage’s sixteen year old appetite and caused him to forget his embarrassment.’

  ‘This is better than rats, sir,’ he said, rubbing his hands.

  ‘Rats?’ asked Hornblower, vaguely. For all his appearance and attention his thoughts were up on deck, and not in the cabin.

  ‘Yes, sir. Until we made this harbour rats had become a favourite dish in the midshipmen’s berth.’

  ‘That they had,’ echoed Clay. He carved himself substantial slices of cold pork, and plenty of crackling, and added them to the half chicken on his plate. ‘I was paying that thief Bailey threepence apiece for prime rats.’

  Desperately Hornblower jerked his mind away from the approaching Natividad and delved into the past when he had been a half-starved midshipman, homesick and seasick. His seniors then had eaten rats with gusto, and maintained that a biscuit-fed rat was far more delicate a dish than beef two years in cask. He had never been able to stomach them himself, but he would not admit it to these boys.

  ‘Threepence apiece for rats seems a trifle dear,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember paying as much as that when I was a midshipman.’